The Declaration of Dependence
by RoseLight
Summary: The war is over. Are they? HM


The Declaration of Dependence

Benjamin Franklin Pierce enjoyed kissing. His mother had always told him practice makes perfect, and he always listened to his mother. Diligent practice had crafted his performance into an ardently appreciated art form. At the moment, his lips were caressing and conversing with the delicately goose-bumped flesh of Margaret Jeanne Houlihan. The only light in her shadowy tent was the surface of her moon-glazed skin.

Tomorrow the 4077 would be a military memory. Hawkeye did not quite know what to do about that encroaching reality, so he returned his concentration to the granting and receiving of pleasure, which he did so well. "It can't end like this," he muttered to himself.

Except that she overheard his words, and suddenly her body froze like a plank under his touch. Can't end like this...? she panicked. Of course it could end like this. It would be perfect to end like this. No regrets, no recriminations; no lies, no disappointments, no pain. The perfect relationship that never began.

Margaret's bitter love-lesson had been this: Men Leave. As early as her father, who left her so often for the army. She grew up thinking, if only she could chase the army, she could catch up to her father and he would provide the security a little girl needs. Her quest for security led to her demand for control and order and--Damn, she didn't want Sidney Freedman in her head, not now. All she wanted was Hawkeye, everywhere.

She wondered what it would be like, not to share him. Not to share him with the wounded or the women or the gin or the jokes...

He wondered about romping with her on sleek satin sheets instead of scratchy, grainy, graying service-issue linen, and fantasized about her fragrance, if she came to him fresh from a bubble bath instead of a cold shower scented with mosquito repellent. And he wondered if he'd ever get the chance to find out...

Most of her former encounters had been brisk, fumbling and furtive. But she'd like the chance to linger with him, to know him in a room with four sturdy walls and a fireplace and the luxury of a locking door .She would lock him in, and lock the world with its responsibilities and worries out. For hours, days even...

A moment before she had been a flame; now she was merely a wisp of blue-gray smoke drifting from his hands. He could taste her tears and his kisses turned tender. "Margaret...?" he crooned softly. "Baby...?"

"Why?" she demanded, choking on the word and furious with herself for caring. "Why can't it end like this? Can't you leave me one fragile memory to carry away from this rat-hole? One single sweet moment so that next year, or the year after, when I'm alone and afraid I can have something to hold on to? Why can't it end like this?" she challenged.

"Maybe because I don't want it to end at all."

The entire Orient was silent and still and she had stopped breathing.

"The war is over, and I am finally divorced from the US Army. Irreconcilable differences, you know. But I'm still not a free man. I'm a POW. Overwhelmed, captured. A Prisoner of Woman." His lips punctuated his whispers.

Fancy, faithless words. Margaret kissed him back just to shut him up. Pierce's Patented Passionate Prattle--God! She was alliterating--that was His style. Erotic eloquence. Why did he need to justify everything with words? His lips were genuine when they trailed down her throat. It was their glib palaver she mistrusted.

If he didn't hush soon his merciless words would pierce her heart and--Pierce. Ha. A pun--how like Him. When had they begun to read each other's minds, to finish each other's sentences, and why had she not noticed it before?

He gripped her arms and forced her to look at him. "Haven't you been paying attention?" His voice rose in agitation." There is nothing about the way I feel about you that is 'fragile'--or temporary. Dammit, Margaret, you are contrary and bossy and stubborn. There's a lot of women out there who are easy to love, soft, compliant, cuddly, but you know what? The heart is a muscle. If you don't believe me, I'll lend you my Grey's Anatomy and you can look it up. Loving you, my dear Margaret, is the cardiac workout of a lifetime.

Loving you makes me a better man: stronger, kinder, more honest, more loyal. And you've seen me at my worst, my lowest, most miserable, weakest, and yet…here you are..." he grinned into the dark, marveling.

"Hear me. I am not just going to fade away into your scrapbook, relegated to the back of your closet until you feel empty enough to pull out my shadow and whimper over it someday. If I leave you--I disappear too. Understand? " He asked as if all the world depended on her answer.

Dear God, yes. She wanted to believe again, just one more time. Just this one man.

He shifted, uncomfortable with the long pause. He drew himself up, straightened his posture, and began to recite. "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to admit to the romantic bonds which have connected him to another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the united station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the union..."

She held up her hands in surrender. "Words of one syllable, please..."

He took both her hands and solemnly kissed the back and palm of each one. It was the shortest and most significant speech he had ever uttered.

"I...Do."

Her laughter was nervous and shaky and sweet. "I think I want a witness for this."

"Dressed like that?" he raised an eyebrow. "Undressed like that?"

"Hmmm…OK, a notarized statement signed in blood will have to do."

"Silly Major: no one can read a doctor's handwriting. You could be notarizing my laundry list."

She sobered. "Hawk, why are we both too shy to talk seriously about this very serious subject?"

"Not so, not true," he stretched and arranged himself cross-legged on her cot. "I have a very serious question about our future together. Regarding the aforementioned laundry list. Young lady, do you darn socks?"

"You bet." She reached over and peeled a sock from his foot, waved it in the air, sniffed it, scrunched up her face, tossed it on the floor, pointed at it and proclaimed, "Darn sock!"

It was nearly dawn and they were both punchy from lack of sleep and abundance of exhilaration. He reached around and put his arms around her, snuggling her back into his chest, both shaking with laughter. "I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," he quoted. "Shall we tell the Colonel that we want to canter into the sunset in double harness?"

finis


End file.
